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I used to host my blog on Medium because it was the easiest way to get a simple, attractive blog available with a minimum amount of work. Then they started add
by michaelhoffman 4y ago
I used to host my blog on Medium because it was the easiest way to get a simple, attractive blog available with a minimum amount of work.
Then they started adding various annoyances, which I'm sure they thought would help with financial goals, but it eliminated the "simple, attractive" part. As a reader, seeing that a link went to medium.com used to mean it was easy-to-read and text-focused, and afterwards, it meant that it would be full of intrusive crap one would have to deal with before reading. To the point that people started making [special browser extensions](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/make-medium-readable-agai/kljjfejkagofbgklifblndjelgabcmig https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/make-medium-readab...) just to remove them.
As a writer, whose main interest is in people reading my stuff (rather than, say, monetization), I wanted to move it somewhere where the readers would not be annoyed and maybe refuse to click on the link in the first place because of the domain.
I'm sure the above describes many others' experiences as well.
- dark__paladin 4y agoWhere did you move to? Self hosting?
- michaelhoffman 4y agoStatic Pelican site hosted on bitbucket.io. I'd use GitHub Pages if I were doing it today.
- qudat 4y agoI moved to Hugo and then built prose.sh
- jklm 4y agoInterestingly enough, Substack is heading down the same direction - when you get linked to an article, it now forces a full screen popup on you asking if you want to subscribe or just read.
- SQueeeeeL 4y agoNone of the incentives changed. We really just need someone egalitarian to make the craigslist of blogs and never be tempted to stab the goose who's laying the golden eggs for quick monetization. The blogging space is too long-term for that short sighted nonsense
- candiddevmike 4y agoThis would be a good service for the Wikimedia Foundation to provide, IMO.
- Permit 4y ago> never be tempted to stab the goose who's laying the golden eggs Isn’t the whole point that there are no golden eggs? People don’t want to pay and people don’t want ads. Where would you get income for the authors and for the platform itself?
- anigbrowl 4y agoWrite a book or become an e-celeb and go on tour. 90% of blog/newsletter content (which are basically the same thing) is just self-promotion anyway.
- Firmwarrior 4y agoYeah man, the popups on blogs feel a lot like being forced to watch commercials before a movie trailer
- vimda 4y agoI think there's monitization models somewhere there. Off the top of my head, you could go the email route and charge for "premium" features. Analytics, custom domains etc. Either that or it could to be run as a loss leader for some other service
- readwriterick 4y ago
- binaryanomaly 4y agohttps://hashnode.com/ https://hashnode.com/ is close to what medium used to be, I suppose. Hope it will stay like that.
- judahmeek 4y agoIs there a way to confirm whether hashnode is VC-funded or not? Because if it is VC-funded, enshittification is inevitable.
- mikeyouse 4y agoIt's VC funded, but maybe Salesforce and Sequoia don't care about investor return (ha): https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/hashnode/company_financials https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/hashnode/company_fin...
- HelixEndeavor 4y agohttps://bearblog.dev https://bearblog.dev seems like a good alternative for simple, clean, good looking blogs. Prioritizes quick loading and efficient web design.
- raywu 4y agoDo you like Svbtle?